The Cure for a Dying Phone

A new app lets you forward your calls and texts

You’re on your way to meet your friend, and your phone’s battery is at 10 percent. Cue panic.

At 7 percent, you jot down the address of your coffee date. At 5 percent, you really wish you’d charged that bad boy this morning. At 2 percent, you text her, saying, “My phone’s about to die. Just FYI.” At 1 percent...well, you get the picture.

There’s a new app to help in a situation like this: Hotel My Phone. It lets you use that last drop of battery life to have your calls and texts forwarded to a friend’s device until you can get to an outlet.

When you check in on your bestie’s phone (she needs to have the app, too), you’ll have access to all of your own contacts. You can send or get texts and even make phone calls with your regular number--even if you have an iPhone and your friend has an Android. This all works thanks to the cloud (which you totally understand, right?).

The catch: While Hotel My Phone is a free download, calls and texts cost a few cents each. But it’s small change when we’re talking about the anxiety that could arise should you happen to miss a text as critical as: “Call babysitter. STAT.”